Top Tips for Supporting Your Pelvic Health Over the Festive Period
The Festive Season can lead to big changes in our day-to-day routine. These changes can bring us joy (or stress!) but can create major difficulties for people dealing with pelvic floor problems, like pain and constipation.
🤔Why Do Holiday Flares Happen?
📌Stress:
The holidays can be extremely stressful! Changes in routine, combined with added pressures, events, and financial difficulties can lead to people feeling incredibly stressed and overwhelmed.
The pelvic floor muscles are known to be threat responders, so this can lead them to overactivate to guard and protect you against all of the stress.
📌Dietary Changes:
Dietary changes can make us more likely to develop constipation. Our habits can also lead to dehydration, as we exchange water for holiday drinks, and scurry around forgetting to get our fluid in.
📌Routine Changes:
it can be really hard to keep our healthy habits up that support pelvic function over the holidays. This leads us to remove some of our self-care from our schedule, and without it, some of our symptoms can start to creep back up.
❓❓❓So, How Can You Make It Through The Holidays Without Worsening Pelvic Health Problems?
Try These 4 Tips!
✅Tip #1: Simplify Your Holidays
Prioritize what is important to you, and remove pressures for what you think "should" be happening. Prioritize joy, family, and quality time, and remove any pressures and obligations that you have placed on yourself.
✅Tip #2: Plan For Healthy Eating & Hydration
Plan your day to make sure you're also eating fresh fruits and veggies, getting adequate fibre, and getting adequate fluid .
✅Tip #3: Create A Daily Stress-Reducing Routine
Take some time to think about what feels relaxing and stress-reducing to you, then try to build that in to your day.
✅Tip #4: Prioritize Your Self-Care
This one is hard as schedules get busy. But, as you plan your days and weeks leading up to the holidays, keep yourself in the equation. Think about the key pieces that are helping you right now, and make sure these stay in your schedule.